A Successful Charleston Jaunt!

This past weekend we finally got back to Charleston. We haven’t be able to take a really relaxing weekend there in over a year, which is way too long! We picked up Catherine from CoC on Friday evening and headed toward a place I’d heard about a while back. The Glass Onion, on Highway 17 South. Its locavore kind of place that serves both lunch and dinner at moderate prices. We went kind of wild and gamey, starting with Rabbit Liver & Pickles,  moving on to Sheepshead* & Rutabagas, Duck with Hoppin’John, and Quail with Grits & Greens. We finished up with probably the best bread pudding I’ve had since we were in New Orleans!

Saturday morning we introduced Catherine to a breakfast that we came up with earlier this year. Baked Apples (which are loaded with Walnuts, Raisins & Cinnamon) with a generous side of steel-cut oatmeal, topped with some Greek yogurt. It’s a very good winter comfort-food type of breakfast, just perfect for a screened-in porch on Folly Beach, with a cup of Café du Monde next to it!

With such a breakfast, we didn’t really feel the need for a formal lunch, so we made do with stop by WildFlour Pastry, which I had recently noted in Southern Living and Garden & Gun. As expected, everything was scrumptious! What you see are a Pecan Sticky Bun, a Raspberry Nutella Turnover, and a Scone with Sundried Tomatoes, Pesto & Mozzarella. I had hoped to bring back a pie or three, but I didn’t realize all their pies are made to order. So that’ll have to be for next time we go, or maybe when Catherine is coming back this way.
Saturday afternoon, we stopped by Crosby’s Seafood and picked some fresh local shrimp. Alice and Catherine used them in a wonderful Salad, modifying a recipe that a friend from Charleston gave us years ago. We really should make it more often, for it was delicious!

Sunday Lunch we wound up with some old friends at the Lost Dog Café on Folly Beach, which turned out to be pretty much what you’d expect to find on Folly, (actually a little better.) There was a roaring Sunday Brunch crowd, but we got seated after a not too long wait. The service was good, and the food well done for your money. We’ll go back!

*Sheepshead is a fish.

Pepper Vinegar and Brockian Hot Sauce

I don't usually have much success growing peppers, generally just winding up with only enough to put a few in salads and a pot beans every now and then.  This year I lucked out, however, and got a bountiful amount of two different kinds from two different sources. 

A friend of mine, Tommy Stone, has an incredibly green thumb, and donated some Jalapeños for the St. Peter's Church Youth to use for a fund raiser.  He said he had plenty more and gave me a grocery bag full. I decided that with such surplus I should make Brockian Hot Sauce. I first found out about this method of hot sauce production about 2 years ago listening to Sean Brock at the SFA Field Trip in Bristol.  Since this was the first time I've tried this, I pretty much followed the instructions.  I started them August 1st and on October 1st I stopped the fermentation process and added the vinegar.  Exactly two months after that I strained it off and here's what I got:

First I tried it some on a Ritz Crackers. It's pretty powerful stuff, but not insane.  The flavor reminds me of Green Smoked Tabasco, but it is significantly hotter. It goes very well with well with Collards!

Late this summer Mom and Dad began gleaning some at Barefoot Farms up near Belton.  Mostly they've been getting Okra, (lots and lots of Okra), but last month before the hard frost came,  they pulled up the last of the pepper plants.  They brought me probably close to a bushel of Hot Hungarian Peppers and a few fruits of various other kinds. We used plenty of them in cooking and making stuffed peppers,  and I made several bottles of pepper vinegar.  We haven't tried them yet. I figure I'll let them set about a month or six weeks, so they should be ready by Christmas. Don't they look real purty in bourbon bottles?

"MWBAA!?"

We went to Thanksgiving Supper with Alice's cousins, up in Owings, South Carolina. Thanksgiving Supper in Owings is a tradition that goes back at least half a century. Usually there's about 25-30 folks.  Cousin Hazel and her family provide the Turkey, Dressing, Gravy, Famous Christmas Rolls, and some other fixin's. The rest of the folks bring a variety of contributions: Potato Salad, Candied Sweet Potatoes, Creamed Corn, Green Beans, maybe a Congealed Salad. It is always a delicious feast. Alice's mom, Mama Lucy, always took a ham, so that’s what we brought this year: a  platter of porcine perfection produced by wrap cooking a Clifty Farms Country Ham. For dessert there is usually cake or cookies, and always, always, Hazel makes Boiled Custard. Always. It is something that she doesn't make often. In fact, nobody that I know of makes it often. Alice makes it several times a year, usually around the Holidays, or when someone has some sort of mouth surgery that makes chewing unpleasant. It is very good: kind of like egg nog without the spices. Very rich, not too sweet, a nice vanilla mellowness.  No booze, but you can add that yourself if you feel the need,  which we don't.

The newest member of the clan is Maggie, Cousin Hazel's first great-grandbaby. She's fourteen months old, and seems to be a fine child, being raised by fine parents. However, through a minor oversight on her parents, she had never had country ham, or the Boiled Custard. Well, that situation has now been rectified. Her dad did not give her the actual hambone to gnaw on, but she finished a substantial portion with enough enthusiasm there is no doubt she is in favor of it. (It's ok, it's ok. There was no fat on it.) After she finished the big slab smallish morsel of ham, it seemed to me she was kind of thirsty. So I offered her some Boiled Custard. It was in a punch cup, and she kind of eyed it suspiciously. She cautiously let me put it up to her mouth, and tilt it so she could get a bit. After a moment, her eyes got big and she snatched the cup out of my hands and with a glug glug glug, it was empty. Then she handed the cup back to me and said "MWBAA!?" Which apparently meant something like "Goodness Gracious, that was mighty fine! Would you please get me another cup? Right Now!" Which of course I did. She followed me around the rest of the night.

Now what makes you think I might exaggerate?

Mama Lucy's Legacy

I knew Mama Lucy for 30 years. She loved to cook, and loved to see folks eat what she cooked.  During the time I knew her she cooked for her husband, her five children, and her five grand-children.  Before I knew her, she apparently cooked for most of southern Greenville County, (a great deal of it in large amounts).  Her children’s friends were always welcome at her table, and from what I hear tell, she and JW did a good bit of entertaining in the 60s and 70s.

After JW (or Wilton as she called him) died 10 years ago, she spent a fair amount of time at our house.  She’d come for a month or three, several times a year, while Alice “tweaked” her medicines and such.  And a fair amount of that time was spent sitting at our kitchen table doing crossword puzzles, looking out the back window at the birds and squirrels, and talking about food.  She didn’t cook too much then, but she still loved to talk about food, and she enjoyed watching cooking shows on TV, and Lord, how she loved to read cookbooks!  She would read cookbooks like most folks read novels.  She loved to get books on different cuisines, but she also loved Southern cooking, and especially Creole/Cajun (lately she had become somewhat enamored with John Besh!)

(A couple of things she did cook in big quantities in the last few years:  She once made me a huge pot of chicken stew and 100 biscuits to take to Lutheran Men.  After that, we’d often tease her to “come help us make a hundred biscuits!” And in 2005, she and her daughter Beth made several coolers full of beef stew to send to Biloxi for Katrina volunteers. She had heard they weren’t getting enough proteins for all the hard work they were doing!)

One of my favorite things was finding a new recipe, telling her about it (many times she’d heard of something similar) and then trying it out on her. Most of the time, she’d love it.  She didn’t particularly like lamb or salmon, so usually those recipes were out, and she very most assuredly did not like rosemary or sage in large quantities, which I do!  I would often tease her about that, saying things like “why don’t we put a couple of tablespoons of sage in this?”  or “You’ll like this Mama Lucy, it’s got loads of rosemary!”  Her answer would many times be “I …. Don’t ….think so, Mr. Philip!”

Here’s just few of the culinary treats Alice and I owe to Mama Lucy:

• Craig Claiborne’s tomato soup (I thought tomato soup was only from Campbell’s)
• Baklava (She only did this once, and then talked Alice into it!)
• Apricot whip
• Biscuit mix (5lbs of While Lilly Self Rising flour + a small can of Crisco=Voila! You've got biscuit mix! All you have to do is add buttermilk!)
• Crème puffs
• Barbecue hash  (which did not involve smoking the pork in any way, shape, or form, but was still wonderfully delicious!)
• Chicken stew (this absolutely had to be made with hens!)
• Dressing made without sage or meat (this was total against my German heritage!)
• Tomato Pie & Candied Sweet Potato (I never knew about these until about 10 years ago!)
• She was the first person I ever saw cook a Lobster
• Tomato Aspic & Pressed Chicken & Home-made Mayonnaise (apparently this was de rigueur for bridge club parties in the 60s!

Mama Lucy snuck out on us Friday afternoon. You know the Big Feast that Jesus says awaits us all in heaven? Well, she’s helping make the biscuits for it right now.  She taught me a lot, and I’m going to miss her.